Va Bene

Excellent food and great service. Wife had a single slice and I had a meat calzone; both were super fresh and tasted authentic. Went down great with a glass of wine. Overall, a great lunch!

Great service! Nice price for
Pizza by the slice! And the ambience is what can I say it is la cantera! Definite will be back to this spot!

Came with my family to Luciano’s for the first time and really enjoyed the atmosphere, service and food! We will definitely be returning when we are back in SA.

Luciano pizza is great at the La Cantera location the reg. Pepperoni pizza thin crust my wife was like wow this is good, of course it’s good I tell her I been a fan of Luciano pizza for a long time and I admit I had better, but it’s whole lot better than Pizza Hut, papa johns or franchise pizza joints. I told my wife this is the only pizza that does not give me heart burn (it weird, but true). Our waitress Anna was very attentive and polite. Good pizza and good service what a way to end my daughters birthday money shopping.

Good food and a fun lunch option at La Cantera! I can recommend the tiramisu, as well as the sandwich/​salad lunch special. Staff was eager to fix the issue of the «salad missing kalamata olives» and I would go back if back in town! Kid friendly and budget friendly.

Luciano’s serves two different groups of patrons, and they do both well. They have the New York style pizza by the slice for people just looking for a quick, cheap meal, and they have the fancier Italian fare for people looking for a nice lunch or dinner out. I tend to fall into the latter category most of the time, but either way, this is my favorite place to eat in La Cantera.
The traditional Napoletana style pizza is amazing – great wood oven crust, really fresh sauce, and perfect authentic mozzarella. To me, this is as good as Dough or Fratello’s (which are also wonderful). I can never resist the pizza, so I haven’t tried the pasta dishes yet, but they look really excellent.
The prices here are a steal for what you get. The fancy Italian pizzas are anywhere from $ 10 – 14. I always end up taking home about a quarter of mine, so that buys dinner and a lunch! I’ve also gone with my husband, split an appetizer, and then split a pizza. It can be a pretty inexpensive date. Their Antipasto for Two appetizer, which was $ 13, had TONS of mortadella, salami, and prosciutto, along with some cheeses and marinated vegetables. I’ve had $ 30 charcuterie plates with less meat on them. The wine is around $ 8 a glass, but it’s basically two glasses because they bring you this little carafe with your glass.
The ambiance is just fancy enough to fit the quality of the food, but it’s not so fancy that you feel like you can’t walk in in jeans or stick around with your pizza by the slice.

Wow, glad we stopped in! With all of the choices in La Canterra, we were hesitant to walk into a place we knew nothing about. However, we were right next to this place when everyone was hungry and we needed a shopping break. This place hit the spot perfectly! Nice staff, super chill Jamal was our waiter… excellent job. The mozzarella (antipasto) plate was divine. The calzones are scrumptious too! We will be back!

I’ve been to Va Bene several times for pizza, and have experienced some variability in the quality of my food. Sometimes it’s great, sometimes not so great. On the occasions the pizza was good, the crust reminded me of authentic NYC-​style pizza. Sauce and cheese were tasty, and toppings were fresh and abundant. I wholeheartedly recommend the Spinaci.
This is a place where you’ll spend ~$ 20 on a large NYC-​style pie, which is not something I typically do. Maybe once, maybe twice, but not thrice. Va Bene offers smaller «personal» Neapolitan pizzas with specialty toppings, which my wife will get from time to time.
Overall, this is a decent (but pricey) pizza place, worth trying for any foodie exploring SA. I’d give it 3.5 stars if I could.

Totally impressed!
We came here in search of pizza. When I opened the menu I noticed the mozzarella bar… BONUS!
I told the waiter I wanted a dry red wine so he immediately went to confer with the bartender and brought me back a taste, which was perfect. I ordered that wine (can’t remember the name, but it was Italian and delicious!), a mozzarella, and the chicken Alfredo pizza. It was fantastic.
The crust was soft and slightly crunchy at the same time. The pizza had just the right amount of garlic on it. The mozz bar came with SO MUCH STUFF!
The best part? With a large pizza, mozz, a glass of wine and a beer, our total came to only $ 47.
Our waiter, Charles W. was fantastic — totally attentive and even boxed out pizza for us.
They also had live musicians, who sang us a few songs for tips. It was fantastic.
All in all, we plan on coming here for dinner everyone we come to town.

Nice atmosphere, good service and excellent pizza. Had the family special that fed 4 of us with drinks for under $ 30.

It was good :)
The only issue is the price, it was 2 $ to add spinach and the manager came out to tell us how some of our «adds» to our pizzas might ruin the pizza. Pizza is affordable but the adds are priced weird, I can get a whole pack of spinach for 2 $ and adding a meat costs 2 $ as well, so it’s like…
I appreciate the advice and understand that you don’t want us to ruin the art of pizza but let it be our bad choices.
I appreciate the experience here and would come back but now I’m tempted to try Grimaldi’s

Totally reminiscent of my time in Italy… I’ll never forget my first official Italian pizza in Breganze… Quattro stagione with a glass of red wine. That’s what I ordered here as soon as I saw it was offered on the menu. In Italy, I travelled with my son. Here at this restaurant, I had a lunch date with my son and we not only enjoyed the food, but we fondly talked about our memories in Italy. This is how authentic I would even dare say to put out there! Some people easily associate music with feelings… we associated this food with our memories back in Italy. Oh how we would love to go back. The place wasn’t packed and so the waitstaff were attentive. The bread was soft and freshly baked prior to getting our pizza — a Quattro stagione each (in Italy, that’s exactly how it’s served… one personal pizza each) and we enjoyed a Nutella afogato in the end. Highly recommend and will definitely be making this a favorite stop while at La Cantera! Mmmmmm-​mmmmm.

There are not enough words to describe the level of service and quality of food at Va Bene! The staff is fantasic. They greet you upon entering the restaurant and everyone one of the wait staff makes sure you have what you need even if they aren’t your assigned server. The wine list is awesome, but better yet are the house label wines. The Pinot Grigio and Moscato are outstanding.
Chef Ciro… the man is an amazing chef. His food is quite simply the best, authentically Italian food I’ve eatten. Whatever Chef Ciro’s special is that day, ORDER IT! You won’t regret it. Every bite is a mouthful of happiness. Their pizza and calzones are equally fantastic! They have outside dinning under the trees which very pleasant.
Add to this Tino’s warmth and humor and it makes for a great place to take family and friends. And it is «KID FRIENDLY» too. Everyone will enjoy a meal at Va Bene!

We ordered the avocado salad and the arugula salad. Lord!
Who serves people salads where the greens have lost their vibrancy? Oh, yeah, this place. The greens for the avocado salad were limp and brown. The arugula was only slightly better.
I’m not sure if it’s because I am from the NY/​NJ area, but when there is an option to add chicken or shrimp, I’m not usually thinking to ask if the shrimp is breaded, if it’s not mentioned. I’ll take that one as my bad. Shame on me for not asking if it was grilled.
Our waiter took our drink order as soon as we sat down. That was good, and promising. He quickly retuned with our water and iced tea, which wasn’t good. After he brought our food, we didn’t see him anymore. Seeing that he wasn’t coming back, we let the hostess know we were ready for the check.
He did apologize for the wait. Why there was a wait, I am not sure because the place wasn’t crowded, but I am happy he acknowledged that problem.

Hostess looked at me like I was from another planet when I told her I made a reservation on open table – she seemed so confused I almost thought I was in the wrong place. It was awkward. Server seemed new, but very kind, polite and accommodating. No salt and pepper on the table, so upon request, we got both, but pepper was from a mill (awesome) but basically empty. Crushed red pepper shaker needs to be replaced-​holes are too small-​we had to take the lid off. Ingredients were fresh, salads were delicious – but pizza was cooked on the bottom (slightly burned) and undercooked on top (slightly doughy) not sure how that happens. Salads and entrees came out within 2 minutes of each other – need to work on the timing. Way overstaffed – a lot of employees just standing around talking right behind us.

The Margarita Pizza is amazingly delicious! The dough is perfectly cooked and the toppings matches perfectly. The price is great too. The salad was delicious and fresh, the pasta is delicious also. A great place to sit outside (when it’s not too sunny) and people watch. At a great outdoor shopping mall La Cantera. The inside dinning room is very nice with an open kitchen. The staff is nice and friendly and service was quick.

The overall experience at Va Bene was horrific, my friend and I went out for a celebration, and not only was the restaurant over staffed but they were openly on their phones and ignoring the other people who were dining alongside us.
When we finally got assigned a waiter he made our party feel awkward and made us feel like we were a hassle.
I ordered the fettachini alfredo, while my friend ordered the spinach calzone, she got her meal long before I received mine, and by the time I received my meal, hers was cold.
The meal was under seasoned and overall unpleasant. My meal was lacking in all taste, and my friend said of her calzone «the spinach tastes like the frozen kind found at HEB, and there are three mushrooms in this calzone, I was under the impression that they were supposed to be stuffed, like I receive elsewhere»
When we asked for a check we discovered that the food was not only inedible, but it was grossly overpriced. We paid $ 24.90 for food we barely touched.
When the waitstaff asked me what I thought of the food, I was honest and stated that it was awful, not only did he fail to express interest in a dissatisfied customer but all he said was «sorry.» And walked away.
My experience was so awful It deserves no stars, but because Unilocal won’t allow that I am forced to give star.

Just barely OK. My husband and I wanted to give this a try after noticing them on the restaurant week list.
We happened to be doing some shopping errands and he suddenly craved pizza and Grimaldi’s was a 3 hour wait. So over to the casually elegant seemingly tasty Va Bene.
We were led to a table promptly and our waitress was around shortly after. She grabbed us drinks and we ordered our food all in reasonable time. I wasn’t too hungry, so I chose to have their arugula salad adding chicken and husband ordered the NY style (18″) half sausage half pepperoni that we would share.
Now, there was a significant wait between my salad and the pizza, which isn’t the biggest issue. There were two particularly ambitious flies that would not stay off my wine glass or our food. Seated inside at the very back. Unappetizing. Furthermore, the salad was not nearly the quality it should’ve been for $ 12. It was the size of a bread plate, underdressed, and my $ 3 add on of chicken? 3 skinny strips of precooked meaty processed chicken. It was like the frozen cuts of rib meat with the painted on grill marks… so disgusting it ruined my appetite for the rest of the meal.
The waitress finally came with my second glass of wine and our pizza after we watched it sit ready on the counter for almost 5 minutes. The pizza was fine, reminiscent of Sbarro’s, but again not on par with the price or wait. Like my «chicken breast», the sausage on the pizza was so gamey for our tastes that we had to pick it off.
I consider myself a very polite customer and we didn’t voice any of these complaints to our waitress just to keep our experience here brief. I also consider myself an adventurous diner with a very well-​versed palate. Perhaps we just happened to order way, way wrong.
Next time we need some good pizza at the Shops, I’ll stomach the wait for Grimaldi’s, or even grab the happy hour ones at Yardhouse. At the least, if ever I want a salad, I will stay far, far away from Va Bene.

Very glad we tried this out. Grimaldi’s told us would be 2 hours for a table for 2
We started with fresh mozzarella from the mozzarella bar. It is great appetizer to share, and we added salami to ours.
We split the Neapolitan pizza and had ours made with prosciutto. Was great wood fired pizza. Will go back again, great option in place of Grimaldi’s.

Va Bene by Luciano’s is a great little restaurant at The Shops at La Cantera. They serve up great traditional Italian pizzas in an actual wood fired oven and traditional pasta dishes as well. I love the Eggplant Parmesan if you’re looking for something Vegetarian.
They have a great wine selection! Ask the bartender or one of the friendly servers (I like them all) for a recommendation if you can’t decide; they are very knowledgable.
Va Bene would be a nice place to go on a date, sit and watch a game or gather as a family while enjoying a day of shopping.
The menu changes and improves occasionally so keep an eye out for some great additions as well as some old Luciano favorites.